Workaholics Review: “Three and a Half Men” (Episode 4.05)

Is it just me or is Workaholics more disgusting this season than ever?

Now granted, this is a show who’s first episode was called “Piss & Shit,” and the three stars tried to buy a child’s toxin-free urine, but still, this fourth season has been filled with gross-out jokes. I don’t think there’s been one episode without a crap joke that was completely unnecessary. At the very least in “Three and a Half Men,” the grossness is sort of mandatory when you consider the main plot centers around Karl cutting off his penis and Blake receiving it after.

Yeah, it’s a weird episode. I mean, you can’t say you’ve seen that plot on another TV show. This idea comes after Alice hires the three guys to make a new orientation video for their company and hands them $300 to do so. Last time we saw Alice, she was sullen in her office over the guys closing down the branch due to getting caught scamming old people, so she seems to have come back around to the guys.

But of course, you don’t really expect the guys to make this orientation video, right? Instead they search for a movie idea—most of which turn into pornos in the description—until Blake reveals Karl’s recent admission that he wants to cut his penis off, so they go to work on a documentary about this odd transition. Meanwhile Adam prefers his Super Size Me-style documentary where he eats 1,000 hot dogs in a week to see if it’s healthy or not, and goes on his own mission.

This season has begun to focus more on Adam and that’s probably not a smart move. Workaholics is always best when the three are together, rather than letting one person receive the spotlight. Plus, too much Adam can be a bad thing. His whole character is based around how obnoxious he can be at times, so putting the focus on him can get grating. His story doesn’t even really do anything, besides have him make out with a transexual assistant after eating hot dogs in a way that I guess you could call erotic?

But the strength of “Three and a Half Men” comes from its dependence on Karl. Having known the main three guys for four seasons now, their behavior has become somewhat expected in almost any scenario, so having secondary characters who the boys can bounce off of (Montez, Gillian, Karl, etc.) helps makes the whole plot a little less predictable.

While “Three and a Half Men” focuses its humor 90% on penises—cutting them off, getting new ones, girls who have them—Workaholics’s biggest joke of the night comes from a fantastic conclusion. Much like “Snackers,” we get a twist, wherein after the guys stop Karl’s operation halfway through, they just go ahead and decide to make Alice’s orientation video, which is surprisingly well done. That is until it cuts to Karl taking about how his ejac comes out the side now and films it. Once again, it’s not the gross-out stuff that remains memorable on Workaholics; it’s the smart jokes that can surprise and not disgust.